Egg Eating

My pb pair have layed a nice size spawn but while trying to clean the odd few white ones the female is stressing out as she gets the odd few good ones at the same time,she trys to spit them back on the cone but after a few attempts & realiseing that they dont stick back she eats them,& this seems to have given the male the green light to start munching,causeing the female to start attacking the male & all hell as set in as she is now trying her best to keep him at bay, & to stop him munching she has started to eat the eggs herself.Do i leave them to it or do i intervean by removeing the male,the problem is the last time i removed the male she seemed to get upset & eat the lot anyway & she seems to do this if i go anywhere in the tank even just to have a clean up & dont go anywhere near the eggs.

Sounds like your pair are easily disturbed. Could you remove all the eggs and artificially raise them? Also, is the tank in a quiet place? My paraiba x blue silver pair always ate the majority until I took Robs advice and moved them to a quiet spot. I now have 300+ 5 week olds!

Hi Helen i wish it was just down to where they are but they are in a room that has little if any traffic.I,m goin to use an egg guard on the cone next time around or i will just remove the parents & raise the myself.I have removed the male so will see how the female gets on with whats left.

I have had young pairs where one has thought it a good idea to eat & the other got rather cross & started to lay into the first, by the next batch the egg eater had got the idea that you don't eat eggs as you get a telling off
Anouther way of dealing with this is to put a hardy dither fish or 2 in the tank with them (make sure there are hiding places!) as the pair then concentrate on defending the brood rather than munching (this has even worked for me with egg eating Discus ).
Lisa

Great idea lisa i could try a couple of rummynose that will keep them active & well worth a try.